I checked my stock and decided I needed to make a “medicine” run…Off to Spec’s we went. After a stop for a lunch of TexMex cuisine I went shopping in the aisles of my favorite neighborhood “medicine” store. Granted, I came home with a few bottles of the white version of the “medicine”, but most met the “flu medicine” test…Does anyone know if I can write these off as medical expenses on my income taxes?

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I was reading another blog today that seems to be looking at this swine flu story with newly opend eyes…

There are serious problems and concerns with our nation’s the world’s current model of how meat is put on the table – call it Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), or Industrial Food Animal Production (IFAP) as the Pew Commission does – threatened public health, environmental degradation, severely compromised animal welfare, and decimated rural communities. Just recently, just this week, just today, we’re all getting a dose of reality about the public health angle with the discovery and emergence of the H1N1 triple-hybrid human/bird/pig flu virus.

The more I observe this modern world we have created…The more I wonder who was paying attention to the details.

It seems as if we have let the corporate profit takers have their way with the world in the past few years without holding them accountable for their lack of knowledge in what they were messing with. Does anyone other than me find it strangely coincidental that it was with the rise in CAFO’s or factory farms that the obesity “epidemic” began to grow. Who has tested the cumulative effects of all the growth hormones and antibiotics that we are accumulating in our bodies just so the big meat companies can pull a few more cents of profits out of their factories? The residues of all of these chemicals are leaching out into the groundwater. We are accumulating them in our bodies with practically every meal we eat.

From recent news reports, it doesn’t even make a difference if you are a vegetarian. The antibiotics and other chemicles have become so prevasive, they are now measurable in the very vegetables we eat.

We have had thirty years of food “scientists” telling us what we should and shouldn’t eat. We have a thirty year history of getting more and more unhealthy as a result. This weeks health problem’s “cure” leads to next years new “disease”. And yet, every magazine, every newspaper, every hour of television has us being told by “experts” that we should ask our doctor if this or that new medicine isn’t right for us…Don’t pay any attention to the fine print or the announcer rattling off the infamous side effects. Is it just me or do these lists always sound worse than the “disease” they are treating.

Now…Quite suddenly, the questions being raised or of a different level of scary. Could or penny pinching CEO farmers be breeding the bugs that will lead us to the next pandemic. I know, we are not supposed to call it swine flu any more because it hurts the profits of the factory pig farmer. Guess what, it seems there is a lot more than flu growing in those pig farms…And just think, as we keep pumping the antibiotics into these animals we are creating “bugs” that wont be treatable…All for a little faster growth, that tough of “wellness” that lets us crowd just a few more animals into the shed…All for that almighty extra few cents per head per month…If it’s that hard to make these things profitable, maybe, just maybe there is a reason.

Is it any wonder that when the avian flu scare happened a few years ago, chickens were slaughtered in great numbers around the world to stem the spread. We are already seeing the same thing with pigs in certain parts of the world.

And all this is happening at time when the world’s financial ability to weather additional shocks is at an unprecedented low…Schools are closing down daily. Here in Texas, some are closing for upwards of three weeks. What is going to happen as families already strapped by shaky finances are forced to stay away from jobs to take care of children?

We are throwing money at the banks…We have always thrown money at the corporate farmers…Who is going to be around and pay the bills?